I hope that the title I have scrawled will put Lisa off reading any further, though I’m not sure. I smile at my use of the hidden-in-plain-sight tactic.
I complete the next few pages with various make-believe bullet-point lists, sketches and flowcharts. Then I remove the Post-it notes from the back of my wallet and copy the information down onto the sixth page of the book. These notes cover the initial research that I carried out over the last few days.
I also copy down the four questions, disguising them amid other financial text. I am satisfied of where my escape will ultimately lead me: somewhere in Middle America. I decide to tackle the second question: when? At the present time there is nothing really stopping me from leaving fairly soon. I make a list of positive factors:
I have the money to get there. I know where I am going.
I am intelligent enough to work out pretty quickly which routes I will take to get there unnoticed.
I want need to get out of here.
Then, on the opposite page, I write a list of negatives:
It’s Christmas in eight days.
It’s Oscar’s birthday the first week in January.
I haven’t planned everything properly.
I haven’t worked out how I’ll survive when I get there, and whether I’ll just disappear or tell the family.
Finally, I haven’t had time to properly say my goodbyes to the children.
This final point gets me thinking. I’m not entirely sure whether there will be a way to do this. I realise that I don’t mean what I have written. What I mean is that I haven’t come to terms with the fact that one day, very soon, I will leave them and it will be for the last time. I will close the front door quietly behind me and disappear. I need to steel myself for this. I am already reconciled to the fact that my actions are absolutely in the best interests of everyone.
It would be best for me if I could leave at a time when the children are being awful to one another. The prime moment to disappear, so that my final memory is one of biting or hair- pulling or shouting. From their perspective, however, this would be the worst time to leave. Hannah, at the very least, would be old enough to remember that her father left at a moment when she was misbehaving. What sort of damage would that do to her in the future?
An alternative is for me to leave when all is peaceful and calm. A day like today. The second after I kissed Oscar’s forehead and walked out of the room. A vision of contentment. Safe, secure, serene. My departure at a moment when the children were, well, okay.
The devil’s advocate arrives, as expected, and I begin to think about how the children would view this in years to come.Why did Dad leave when things were good? Weren’t we enough?
Didn’t he love us? And then an internal struggle develops inside my head: why I would leave in the first place if things were good?
The overriding reason for my departure is simple. Every single day I’m faking it. This is not the life I chose. Not by a long way. And although bedtime with Oscar tonight was wonderful, what about all the times when it isn’t? I’m sure that prisoners who have been incarcerated for the remainder of their lives smile from time to time. I’m sure that although they are locked away from the world all day every day, they still manage to find a small amount of pleasure in their lives. That certainly does not mean that their surroundings are of their own choosing.
Whichever way I go about this will not be ideal for the children. Certainly not in the short term. So, I decide, the best thing to do is to choose a date and stick to it. Regardless of whether the day before was a good day or a bad day. I pick a date and I leave.
I doodle in my book for a while and then write down the date.
Friday the twenty-first. There, that’s it.
Four days away.
CHAPTER_THIRTY
Well, if you could just put up with me for four more sleeps.
Lisa pops her head around the dining room door and says,
“Hannah’s going up now.”
She’s taken me by surprise and I am not quick enough to hide my notebook away. It doesn’t seem to matter; she has already gone. The door closes behind her. I stand and push the notebook under the cushion of the chair nearest the fire and make my way into the hall.
“Is it bedtime already?” I say.
Hannah is on the stairs. She turns. “Dad!” she says. “Come on,” says Lisa, taking her by the hand.
“I want Dad to take me up,” she says.
“Shh,” says Lisa, her brow furrowing angrily.
“I want Dad to take me up,” Hannah repeats in a whisper. “Fine,” says Lisa. She pulls her hand away and walks back down the stairs, pushing past me as we meet at the bottom. “I don’t mind popping her in,” I smile.
Lisa ignores me and goes into the kitchen. Hannah shrugs and smiles at me. I head up the stairs and meet her near the top. She brushes her teeth, and a few moments later she is in bed. I sit on the edge of the bed.
“Chat?” she says, patting the duvet next to her as an indication for me to lie down. I look at my watch and am surprised to see that it’s nearly half past ten.
I shake my head. “Sorry, we haven’t got time.”
Her nose wrinkles. “Aww.” “It’s too late.”
“So,” she tries, “has it been a good day?”
I smile. I’m impressed by her tenacity. I can’t help but join in. “Best ever. And how about you?”
“Best ever. And better now…”
As always, we speak in unison: “…you’re here with me.” “But,” I say, standing up, “I’m afraid tonight I have to go.”
A smile spreads across her face, then she gets herself comfortable and closes her eyes. I lean down to kiss her and then dodge through the graveyard of Barbies stretched across the floor until I reach the door.
Just as I’m leaving, she says quietly, “Dad…” “Yeah?” I whisper.
“Is it still snowing?”
“Yep.”
“If it snowed forever and never melted and kept piling up, would we end up in space?”
“Er, I suppose so.”
“So there’d be no gravity?”
“Can we talk about this tomorrow, sweetheart?” “Sure,” she says. “Night-night.”
I close her door behind me.
I am sitting on the edge of the bed, pulling off my socks, when Lisa enters the room. She heads over to the wardrobe and flings the doors open. The hinges groan, a long, strained sound which hints at a fifty-year-long oil drought. Lisa mutters something and the words are muffled by the jumpers and jeans in front of her. It doesn’t help that her words are further lost beneath the scraping sound of her angrily sliding clothes along the rail. I’m not entirely sure what she is looking for in the cupboard, as it is unlikely that she will need to dress again tomorrow. The weather suggests that once again we will all be marooned together.
Then I realise that she is not looking for anything; the sound of hangers clinking together is simply her way of setting the scene that there is a storm brewing. A starter before the main course of narrative she is about to speak.
“I’m not happy,” she says. Her voice is a mix of obvious frustration and that patronising tone which screams that she thinks the person she is addressing is an idiot.
I pause for a moment, wondering what the right answer to this question could be. “Oh dear” and “Why?” are quickly discounted. The former will sound patronising, even if I get the delivery perfect. The latter is a conversational lighting of a fuse which will lead to an explosion on her part on the basis that she already believes me to be an idiot. To not know ‘why’, of all things, to her will be the pinnacle of stupidity.
I quickly scan backwards through the day, wondering which thing it was that made her unhappy. There is no such event that I can immediately bring to mind. I hear her sigh, a sign that my answer is taking too long. Panicked, I blurt out, “What about now?”
Her patience hangs with the fragility of the cobwebs on the light above her. The inf
lection on the last word – an idle, here- we-go-again sound – was a mistake. It’s not one she misses.
“What do you mean, ‘now’?”
The reason for using the word was not to goad her. Seriously. The reason was to encourage her to realise that whatever the problem is, we can fix it. The use of ‘now’ was to underline that there have been plenty of times that she has been upset and we’ve overcome every single one. Lisa doesn’t read it that way, she takes the word to mean (yawn, stretch) ‘here-we-go-again’. That I am minimising something important. The problem is that I don’t know the current issue, and therefore it’s impossible for me to make the call that it’s unimportant.
“What’s the matter?” I say.
“What’s the matter now, don’t you mean?” she says angrily. I take a deep breath and stand to remove my pyjama bottoms. The room is silent for a few moments. I pull the duvet back and climb into my side of the bed.
“Get into bed, why don’t you?” she says.
I hadn’t realised that I needed to be out of bed to listen to her speech. “I’m cold.”
“I’m not happy.”
The conversation has come full circle. I am careful not to use the word ‘now’ in my next sentence. “What about?” “Today,” she snaps.
“Are you getting into bed?” I ask.
I wish she’d come out from behind the cupboard door. I feel like I’m dealing with an exceptionally irritable Wizard of Oz. Or a character arriving from Narnia. For effect, she slides the hangers across again and slams the cupboard door. Unfortunately for her, she traps one of her dresses in the door, and the moment of supposed thunderous noise dissipates to a muted nothing.
I watch her as she walks, semi-naked, around the end of the bed. She is wearing just a t-shirt and pants. I watch as her legs ripple in the half-light. When she reaches her side, she pulls off her t-shirt and I see the excess skin that has fallen and gathered around her waist. I consider that she may benefit from everlasting snow and no gravity.
For that moment, as she stands with her back to me, time mysteriously slows to an almost stop. I cannot describe it in any other way except that it feels like I am in a film. All heads turn and mouths drop as the leading lady walks into the room. Her actions are slowed to the absolute minimum and it feels like she is not even moving in front of me. As if somebody has given me the opportunity to look at Lisa, without the distraction of children or work or bills or television. And in this fleeting moment I am able to draw from memory the things that attracted me to her in the first place. All the things that years before gave me that little flutter in my chest. The unrivalled feeling of excitement that if bottled would make me a millionaire. I’d like to tell you about each little thing, but as they appear into my mind they pop, one by one, like tiny bubbles. They no longer exist. Each good trait that I fell in love with appears like a PowerPoint slideshow in my mind: bold words spin across my vision, and then a thick black permanent marker crosses each one out. And the trait no longer exists.
Good sense of humour.
Strikethrough .
Fun to be around.
Strikethrough .
Caring.
Strikethrough .
Loving.
Strikethrough .
It seems that each trait that I loved has somehow become twisted and contorted. Each has taken on a new, less-attractive form.
I am not egotistical enough to think that I am not to blame for some of the changes in Lisa’s ways. And although she stands near-naked in front of me, I am not talking about her physical changes. They happen to us all. They certainly happened to me, and my body hasn’t had to endure two new humans growing inside it. And after all, beauty is only skin-deep / on the inside, whatever the phrase is.
As I watch her so, so slowly reach down to collect the t-shirt she sleeps in, I realise that our situation isn’t going to get any better. I am sure that these traits still exist somewhere deep below the surface, occasionally brought out on a girls’ night out or hen do, but something about our union has all but destroyed them. It has stopped Lisa from being able to display these traits with me anymore. And I’m sure that over the years, my actions will have contributed to this.
Please don’t misunderstand me: I have no secrets I’ve not told you about. My past doesn’t involve something as dramatic as cheating on my wife, or having a gambling addiction, or downloading explicit material on the internet. It just seems that our time together has, like sea-glass, worn us down. Our relationship reduced to something small enough to slip through your fingers.
I have absolutely nothing against Lisa. I just don’t want her anymore. And in this moment of clarity I suspect that she doesn’t really want me either. As time speeds up, back to normal, and Lisa pulls on her oversized bed t-shirt and climbs into the bed alongside me, that’s the mindset in which I enter the following conversation.
“What’s up?” I say.
She turns to me. “Why are you talking to me like that?” “Like what?” I say.
“Like…” She pauses to think. “Cocky.”
I didn’t realise I was being cocky; I certainly didn’t mean to come across that way. Perhaps it’s because I agree with what I think she is about to say to me. “Sorry,” I offer.
“It’s okay,” she says. She turns to face me. “I’m not happy, Rich,” she says bluntly.
I change my facial expression to let her know that I’ve heard her and she should continue. I can’t be sure what my face looks like to her.
“I don’t think it’s fair on the kids – y’know, how it’s been.”
I want her to keep speaking, but it feels like even now we are wasting time. We can skip the opening of the conversation – the feeling around in the dark for the right words so we don’t upset each other. She’s not happy. Neither am I. It’s clear we both want the same thing.
I can’t help but interrupt.
“I agree,” I say. “I’m not happy either.”
Let’s cut to the chase.
She sits up in bed. “What do you mean?” she says. Her voice is suddenly extremely wary, defensive.
“I’m not happy either,” I repeat.
I have a different kind of excited feeling inside me, like all the planning I’ve been doing is now obsolete. I’m about to show my cards to Lisa, and I already know that she’ll accept them and throw in her hand. I hear a bump from the attic above our room which sounds like a body part has fallen off. We both stare at the ceiling, awaiting another sound, but it never comes. If we weren’t at such a crucial point, I’d go upstairs and reattach the mystery appendage.
“Well, why didn’t you do something about it?” Lisa says. “About what?”
“The kids. Today.”
It seems the conversation has strayed from the path to separation.
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
She tuts. “The kids have been little…I-don’t-knows today. They needed entertaining. But you’ve done nothing with them all day.”
I swallow.
“They’ve been arguing, fighting, God knows what else.
Where have you been?”
“Well –”
“Hiding away, as usual. I let you sleep in all morning, then you get up and ignore them. Even my mum says so.” “I put them to bed.”
“Woah, nice one, Richard. That took all of ten minutes.” “Yeah,” I say, confirming the timescale for no apparent reason.
“I don’t want to argue. I’m just saying, I’m not happy.”
I blink.
“What?” she says.
“I just blinked.”
“Oh, right. I thought you were going to say something. Anyway, you’re going to be at home again tomorrow, so I’m just saying, spend some time with them. Okay?”
It’s easier to agree. So I do.
She shuffles back down the bed and once again we are on the same level. I turn to face the wall and she puts her hand on my back. The fabric crunches and then settles, and we are in position
to sleep. I can feel her breath on my neck. I feel like it may take me some time to get off to sleep tonight. The room is darker than I can ever remember.
“Rich?” she whispers. “Mmm?”
“You’ve done a really good job with the curtains.” “Mmm.”
The room is quiet again.
“Rich?”
“Mmm?”
“You said that you weren’t happy either.”
Oh God . “Mmm.”
“What about?”
I make a long, light moaning sound as if I’m on the edge of sleep. Like I only need another second and I’ll be fast asleep.
“Was it the kids?” she says. “Mmm,” I reply.
She squeezes my side. “Well, tomorrow’s a new day, eh?” “Mmm,” I say.
CHAPTER_THIRTY-ONE
The loud, forceful knock coming from the other side of the front door startled Rosie. She looked across the room to the armchair where Bill was sitting. He didn’t seem to have noticed. She was worried that his back was going to begin to cause him problems. He had been sitting in that same awkward way, leaning forwards, almost folded in half, since five o’clock that morning. And now the day had passed and once again it was dark outside. It was as if a thread led from his forehead to the centre of the television, pulled taut, compelling him to keep watching. His expression was a combination of pain and confusion. Rosie concluded that he hadn’t heard the knock at the door, such was the volume of the television.
“The door?” she said. The surrounding blackness meant she wasn’t going to go and open it without Bill. You heard so much in the news these days, she thought, it didn’t seem safe to open the door during the daytime, never mind at this time of night.
Bill didn’t turn. She knew he wasn’t ignoring her; it was just that, well, she had disappeared into the background. Only one thing mattered now.
And there it was again. A loud, forceful knock, followed by two more in quick succession. She had heard similar knocks plenty of times over the years. There was something unmistakable about the sound, and she wondered whether police cadets were taught exactly how to do it.
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